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Gray-White Slime Balls, Physarum leucophaeum
Physaraceae or Many-Headed Slime Family
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Most
of the time this is an inconspicuous bit of slime crawling through the
soil, eating microorganisms. In the fall, when conditions are
acceptable, it produces tiny (about 1 mm wide) fruiting bodies.
These are bluish or grayish white on the ends of short stalks.
When mature they crack open to reveal dark purple-brown spores
inside. These spores eventually are dispersed by wind, rain or
animals and produce new bits of slime in the spring.
There are other, similar slime molds, and microscopy would be needed to
separate them. Thus the identity of our little gray balls is
tentative. Lawn Ashes (Physarum cinereum) is similar, but produces fruiting bodies in dense crowds on live or dead grass and other vegatation, instead of on soil.
Slime molds have no official common names, and I could not find one for
this species, so I made one up. The specific epithet leucophaeum means 'grayish white.'
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